Job Creators: Hot sector - health care

Don't just thank Obamacare for that boom of jobs in health care. While the federal health insurance mandate has fueled job growth in the medical field—more people translates to a higher demand for services—experts point to at least two other trends fueling the surge: baby boomers who are living longer and a sharper focus on preventive care. The latter has opened the door for new types of jobs, or at least a modern twist on current ones.

Take patient care coordinators. “A lot of these roles deal with bridging the inpatient side and the outpatient side, making sure when a patient is discharged from the hospital they're connected to home health,” says Katherine Vonderhaar, a consultant at Advisory Board Co., a Washington-based consultancy. If coordinators make sure patients take their medications, appear for follow-up appointments and follow a doctor's orders, there's less chance they'll end up in the emergency room, or so the thinking goes.

Likewise, home health services are booming, says Jason Lovelace, Chicago-based president of CareerBuilder Healthcare. Providing treatment at home is less expensive than in the hospital, and most patients prefer it.

That's not all. A boom in technology and innovation has fueled growth in health care technology. One Chicago company at that intersection is GoHealth LLC, which operates an online portal that helps individuals and families sort through the myriad insurance choices.

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GoHealth, which reported $80 million in revenue in 2013, had 80 full-time employees in 2010. That soared to 672 in 2013, a rate that puts it at fourth on this list.

Today, the company staffs a customer call center that didn't exist a few years ago, and it's on a hiring binge for specialists in fields such as user experience and customer interfacing—crucial skills that will help it stand out in the competitive health insurance arena. (To meet some recent hires, click here.)